Recently Amy Adams announced the NZ Govt would not support any changes to the International Telecommunications Regulations at WCIT, which would give the Government dominated ITU a role in Internet governance.

The ITR’s has existed since the time of the telegraph, and have largely been superseded by commercial arrangements. They haven’t been reviewed for 20 years, and there are naturally some areas where the language needs to be updated to ensure the regulations continue to support an efficient and innovative telecommunications environment.The key debate though will focus around two sets of proposals for including the Internet in the treaty – proposals that focus on the management of the network through matters such as IP allocation, routing, and address registries; and proposals that focus on control of content, spam, and security.

It is my view that these changes would be unhelpful, are unwarranted and could represent a significant threat to innovation and free and open debate.

We are writing to you to express our deep concern about a potentially very damaging change to the governance of the Internet.

You will recall that at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Tunis in 2005, Heads of State and Government decided that a multi-­stakeholder approach remained the most appropriate form of governance for the Internet – our most technically innovative and truly global communication medium.

It is becoming increasingly clear, however, that certain countries are preparing to undermine this inclusive governance model. Their chosen vehicle appears to be the forthcoming World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT-­12), being organised by the ITU to be held in Dubai in December 2012. The task of the WCIT is to review the International Telecommunication Regulations(ITRs), which were established in 1988.

We are becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of transparency inherent in the approach of the ITU in its preparations for this conference. The ITU Governing Council recently declined to accept the entirely appropriate proposal of the ITU Secretary-­General, Dr Hamadoun Toure, that all stakeholders should be given free access to all the preparatory documentation for the conference. This decision on the part of governments alone undermines any suggestion that ITU might itself constitute a multi-­stakeholder organisation.

This is quite contrary to Internet bodies that tend to automatically place all documents in the public domain, and allow pretty much anyone to attend their meetings.

What, for me, shows why we should fear the ITU is the deceptive language they use in trying to rebut these concerns. Rather than deal with the issues in good faith, they try to tell people there is nothing to worry about. In their blog on the Google campaign they say:

Google has erroneously claimed that WCIT-12, which will take place in Dubai from 3-14 December, will be used as a forum to increase censorship and regulate the Internet.

This is just UN style nonsense. The assertion that the UDHR means that no changes to the ITRs cam impact on our free speech on the Internet is farcical and insulting.

Let me give you an example. The UDHR also states:

Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.

The counterfactual letter published by Greenpeace and the International Trade Union Confederation inaccurately claim that ITU Council rejected a proposal to make all documents available to all stakeholders. This is simply not true. In fact, membership unanimously accepted the proposal of Dr. Touré, ITU Secretary-General, to make public the main proposals document – a fact that could have easily been verified with ITU. This document is available on ITU’s WCIT-12 website.

Now this is simple deception, hoping we are too stupid to notice. There is a big difference between releasing all documents and releasing the main proposals document. It is a fact that the ITU Secretary-General proposed making all documents publicly available and was unable to get his Council to agree. Of course they then agreed to release some documents, but again that is vastly different.

So when I see the ITU resorting to such transparent deception, that just reinforces to me that they are an institution that has no role in Internet governance. Their structure is flawed, they are controlled by Governments, they operate in a default mode of secrecy, they are desperate for relevance and as you can see they have an unhealthy culture.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 28th, 2012 at 10:00 am and is filed under International Politics, Internet.
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6 Responses to “Deception from the ITU”

I was involved in implementing them in the NZ context and they remain contrary to the WTO obligations of all signatories to the GATS and have no useful purpose in international law, there being no sanctions for their non observance.

In an age when networks have been built and operated by multiple competing private entities, the ITRs have no role.

The NZ government position should be to argue for their abolition, but as a backstop, no changes. The IRRs (radio regs) have a role because radio waves do not respect borders, but ITRs are a tool of protectionism and technology is rendering them (and much of what the ITU-T Sector does) as redundant.

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Speaking at the launch of a league table showing which countries use the web most effectively, Berners-Lee said the lack of a global internet “off-switch” meant authoritarian regimes could not stem the influx of digital information. “The way the Internet is designed is very much as a decentralised system,” he explained at the London launch. “At the moment, because countries connect to each other in lots of different ways, there is no one off switch, there is no central place where you can turn it off. “In order to be able to turn the whole thing off or really block, suppress one particular idea then the countries and governments would have to get together and agree and co-ordinate and turn it from a decentralised system to being a centralised system. “And if that does happen it is really important that everybody fights against that sort of direction.” Sweden came out on top of the global league table, which was calculated by the World Wide Web Foundation using indicators such as the political, economic and social impact of the web, connectivity and use. The US came in second, ahead of Britain, Canada and Finland. France came in at 14th place. Yemen ranked bottom, closely followed by Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso and Benin. Berners-Lee, who was honoured during the London Olympics opening ceremony, launched the first web page on Christmas Day 1990. He is credited with creating the World Wide Web, which enables users to store and access information via the internet.

Kowtow has nailed it – the UN is a bloody corrupt mess.
Recently, UNRWA (the biggest part of the UN and the group that babysits the Fakestinians) actually celebrated the 60th anniversary of their founding – as if 60 years of babysitting the Fakestinians were something to be proud of!

Then there is the fact that the UN passed a resolution (pushed by the Islamic countries) that called on countries to ban the “defamation of religion”. ( It was, of course, a bid to ban the criticism of *Islam*, but anyway….)
*That* is the kind of environment that the ITU is operating in. I wouldn’t trust them to run a bath.